[RD] Russia Invades Ukraine: War News Thread: Round 6

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NEO CON guest opinion writer
I wouldnt take it too seriously given, vast majority of it is just drivel that you expect from the Right Wing base.
Generally NYT trying to play balance news reporting, and to generate views
Exactly.

Is this plurality of opinion in western media supposed to mean propaganda is working or not working, or it is propaganda or not propaganda? And Ukraine is losing because someone in the US or EU has an opinion, and gets to share it publicly?

I get the impression it just confuses Russians. Western media is supposed to stay on message, like good propaganda. This kind of thing just makes it confusing.
 
Exactly.

Is this plurality of opinion in western media supposed to mean propaganda is working or not working, or it is propaganda or not propaganda? And Ukraine is losing because someone in the US or EU has an opinion, and gets to share it publicly?

I get the impression it just confuses Russians. Western media is supposed to stay on message, like good propaganda. This kind of thing just makes it confusing.
I don't think it confuses them, it just gives them more ammo for their own propaganda.
 

Full List of Republicans Backing Matt Gaetz's Resolution to End Ukraine Aid​

Florida Representative Matt Gaetz is introducing a House resolution to end U.S. military and financial aid to Ukraine co-sponsored by 10 other House Republicans.
In the "Ukraine Fatigue Resolution," Gaetz calls for the United States to "end its military and financial aid to Ukraine and urges all combatants to reach a peace agreement."
"President Joe Biden must have forgotten his prediction from March 2022, suggesting that arming Ukraine with military equipment will escalate the conflict to 'World War III,'" Gaetz said in a statement to Newsweek.
"America is in a state of managed decline, and it will exacerbate if we continue to hemorrhage taxpayer dollars toward a foreign war," he continued. "We must suspend all foreign aid for the War in Ukraine and demand that all combatants in this conflict reach a peace agreement immediately."
 
Absolutely nothing. Indeed, why would resolution to stop Ukraine aid have anything to do with war in Ukraine?
 
"Ukraine Fatigue Resolution"
:lol: what a great name, I can't imagine how pathetic that name is for any of you other posters that are vastly closer to the conflict.

There are probably hundreds of millions of people who're legit fatigued regarding the war, since their lives are so affected by it. But one of the major weapons, fuel, and food exporters of the world really wouldn't be one of them.
 
Hmmm 'kay?

First off, there are no "empires" involved. Strip away the nuclear weapons and Russia is a developing nation heavily reliant on exports of raw material such as crude oil and grain. NATO is a multi state political, economic, and military alliance. None of the member states were forced to join, and military force has never been used to keep a member state in the alliance. It somehow seems to escape Russian political leaders and their Western apologists that the nations that joined NATO in the wake of the USSR's collapse did so precisely due to the fact they had been occupied by Soviet troops for close to half a century, and the Soviets used those soldiers to keep Warsaw Pact members in the alliance AND from developing political systems more liberal than the Soviet government.

Second, there is absolutely no incentives for the US and NATO/EU to keep this war bubbling. Arms sales make up but a fraction of Western GDPs. The resulting displacement of Ukrainians into surrounding countries means those countries have to use funds that would go to their own citizens and divert those funds to provide humanitarian aid to those refugees. In fact, Western leaders literally pleaded with Putin to not invade Ukraine in the run-up to the war.

And to be factual, the Russians have enormous incentives to end the war and leave Ukraine. Beyond lifting sanctions would be a reentry of Russia back into the international community economically and culturally.

But Putin wants a new empire.
 
"More than 5,000 pregnant Russian women have entered Argentina in recent months, including 33 on a single flight on Thursday, officials say...
La Nacion attributed the dramatic uptick in arrivals of Russian citizens to the war in Ukraine, saying that "besides fleeing war and their country's health service, [Russian women] are attracted by their [right of] visa-free entry to Argentina, as well as by the high-quality medicine and variety of hospitals"."

 
And to be factual, the Russians have enormous incentives to end the war and leave Ukraine. Beyond lifting sanctions would be a reentry of Russia back into the international community economically and culturally.

I disagree. Rarely do you ever see a nation that gets sanctioned by the United States have it's sanctions removed. Just look at Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba. Everytime they end up willing to comply for the bare minimum for sanctions to be lifted, the United States always ends up moving the goal posts.

To this day you still can't legally buy Cubans in America even though the Castro regime has been nuclearly disarmed since the sixties.
 
Russia won't make any irreversable concessions in exchange for lifting sanctions. Simply because they can be reimposed any day under arbitrary pretext.
 
Plus I would also like to add America has acted inconsistently and indecisively many times in it's foreign policy as well as it's promises. Look no further then the failed Iran nuclear deal, the President changed right when negotiations were still ongoing, and one of Iran's generals got drone striked to death by the orange man.

How can any nation trust making any deal with America if there is such a lack of diplomatic consistency?
 
Russia won't make any irreversable concessions in exchange for lifting sanctions. Simply because they can be reimposed any day under arbitrary pretext.
And from the American perspective, any concessions will simply be used for rearmament and then used for future imperial aggression. Fun times.
 
Plus I would also like to add America has acted inconsistently and indecisively many times in it's foreign policy as well as it's promises. Look no further then the failed Iran nuclear deal, the President changed right when negotiations were still ongoing, and one of Iran's generals got drone striked to death by the orange man.

How can any nation trust making any deal with America if there is such a lack of diplomatic consistency?

It was 'interesting times', Republicans even sent official warnings to Iran that the Iranian deal wouldn't survive Obama. So, the US was unreliable, but reliably so.
 
How can any nation trust making any deal with America if there is such a lack of diplomatic consistency?
Would this be similar to a diplomatic consistency of a country that say, signs a memorandum pledging to respect the territorial integrity of one of its neighbors, then seizes a peninsula, arms rebels in the east, and then launches a full-scale invasion under the flimsiest of pretenses?
 
Would this be similar to a diplomatic consistency of a country that say, signs a memorandum pledging to respect the territorial integrity of one of its neighbors, then seizes a peninsula, arms rebels in the east, and then launches a full-scale invasion under the flimsiest of pretenses?

Yes, but you also have to look at the bigger picture. Wars only end if there is a political means to an end. If you can't give your opponent a way out because of some moralistic sense of pride or superiority you're not going anywhere.

The only exception to this is total war, whereby the goal is to utterly destroy and annihilate your opponent. With Russia possessing thermonuclear weapons as well as having far too much territory to occupy this is impossible.

Therefore this war will not end through moral virtue signaling but rather hard, cold, and pragmatic realpolitik.
 
More on the topic of "Ukraine fatigue"

 
Therefore this war will not end through moral virtue signaling but rather hard, cold, and pragmatic realpolitik.
When it all comes down to that, is there a limit to nuclear blackmail?

Do we not act if they take eastern Ukraine? All of Ukraine? The Baltics? Poland? Finland? The Caucuses? Central Asia? Mongolia? If Putin decides that his 7,000 warheads alone are enough to reconstitute the Soviet empire, what is the realpolitik answer to that?
 
When it all comes down to that, is there a limit to nuclear blackmail?

Yes, when they begin attacking counterforce or countervalue targets. Or we have reasonable intelligence to believe they will and we are already in a state of conventional war.

Do we not act if they take eastern Ukraine? All of Ukraine?

They are not a NATO member. We have no legal obligation to defend them via direct war. Only support via weapons and proxy war should we choose (which we are already doing).

The Baltics? Poland?

Yes, they are part of NATO therefore we would have to declare war on Russia at that point in order to preserve international respect by not reneging on our defense obligations. To not do so would be weakness and we would lose international influence through a loss of economic dominance, European investors feeling betrayed would dump our currency making it worthless.


Erdogan still has to decide on this one.

The Caucuses? Central Asia? Mongolia?

Not NATO and more under Russian influence anyway. Though most likely increasingly Chinese unless something happens negatively to China in general.
 
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